For Darkness Shows the Stars

Reduction. Felicia had been kind to Elliot, and Ro, and her grandfather. She clearly cared for the Cloud Fleet captains, despite what she’d done to them. And, if Kai was to be believed, she’d only done it to save her beloved daughter’s life.
    But there was still no excuse. It was an atrocity. Love didn’t matter. Neither did life or death. It didn’t.
    It didn’t.
    Elliot squeezed her hands together and pressed them hard into her lap, digging the ridges of her knuckles into her thighs. Every moment, she made herself a new promise.
    If Tatiana comes down the hall, I’ll stop her and make her kick Felicia out.
    If Felicia tells me we can save my grandfather by breaking the protocols, I’ll let her.
    If my father asks after my grandfather’s health, I’ll confess everything to him.
    If the Cloud Fleet offers to help us, I’ll keep their secret forever.
    No one came. Not her sister or her father, not Benedict or the Fleet Posts or even Admiral Innovation. No one appeared in the hall all afternoon but the mute, shuffling figures of the Reduced housemaids as they went about their chores. Time passed, and Elliot sat in the chair, waiting for the verdict from Felicia.
    How much of her life had she spent waiting? Waiting for a plant to sprout? Waiting for her father’s judgment? Waiting for another letter to appear in the knothole from Kai? Waiting for years after Kai left to feel at peace with her decision? She fed the Reduced, she did her chores, she avoided her father and her sister, and she waited. She did the duties she’d been taught as a Luddite, and she lied with every breath.
    Her grandfather, the man she was named for, the last person who could remind her of her mother—he couldn’t die. He couldn’t die before the Fleet was finished and he had one more chance to see a ship—Kai’s ship—launched from the Boatwright docks. He couldn’t die here, in the North’s back guest room instead of his own bed. He couldn’t die and leave her alone with her father and Tatiana and two estates counting on her, only her.
    And then, as the sun dipped low over the horizon, the door to the Boatwright’s chamber opened, and Felicia Innovation emerged.
    Elliot rose to her feet and steeled herself for the news—whatever it may be.
    But Felicia’s expression was grim. “The most I can do is make sure he’s comfortable for his final days.”
    “Really? Even you?” The words spilled out before Elliot could stop them.
    Felicia gave a little shake of her head. “Your grandfather is very old, Elliot. He’s had many strokes. The damage to his brain—”
    Elliot sighed in sudden relief. Felicia wasn’t even going to try, then. Good. She nodded brusquely. “I understand. Thank you for coming to see him.”
    Felicia appeared taken aback, and gave her a curious look. “You take disappointment too much in stride for someone so young, Elliot.”
    Elliot wasn’t sure how to respond. Was she expecting an argument? A confrontation? “I— didn’t have much hope. He’s been sick my whole life. I barely remember what it was like before. I didn’t think there was much you could do. Not with the protocols in place.”
    It was bait worthy of Tatiana, and Felicia blinked—a move that on any other woman would have been a flinch. “You should hope for more,” she replied at last.
    As she put on her coat, Elliot noticed that she didn’t move like the others. And earlier, she’d seen the admiral’s cataracts. So they, at least, had not been enhanced. And yet the young Posts had. Why was that? Were the enhancements too dangerous for Felicia to be willing to attempt on herself or her husband? Kai had mentioned something about second-generation Posts, like himself and Sophia. But the Phoenixes weren’t second-generation. Not if they had a Reduced mother and a Luddite father. She longed to ask, and was ashamed by it.
    “You live in a wonderful time, Elliot—though perhaps you haven’t been taught to think of it as wonderful.”
    “I have not. But neither am I blind.”
    Now Felicia did flinch, and too late, Elliot remembered Sophia and her blindness. Her two halves warred within her. The Luddite she’d been raised to be wanted to hate this Post and the things she’d done to Kai and the others.
    But the girl with the cross-bred wheat and the sick grandfather wanted only to understand. Felicia must have been just as desperate as Elliot. She shouldn’t be condemned for that.
    But what if she’d killed them? What